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Be Afraid of the Dark…
Drabble Wednesday: Zombie Cows
Welcome to Drabble Wednesday for this week as we begin the Zombie Cows Saga…
Zombie Cows
“Do you think they would eat human brains?”
“What?” I looked up from the program code I was fixing and stared at Frankie.
“The Zombie Cows. Do you think they would eat human brains? Or the brains of other cows?”
I continued to stare. “What have you done?”
“I added Zombie Cows to the graveyard scene like you asked.”
“I asked for crows, not cows, and not zombie!”
“Oh, well.” He shrugged, while I tried not to hyperventilate. “I named them.”
“Who?” I asked cautiously, confused.
“The zombie cows.” He smiled. “Jake, Winston, Arabella, Fred, and Doctor Quakenboss.”
Dead Flowers and Cows
“Frankie!” I screamed loud enough to wake the dead, staring at the destruction. He hurried to where I stood. “Look at this! They ate the dead roses! All of them!” I waved my hand over the chewed remains of my virtually decayed floral masterpiece.
“Who?” Frankie’s eyes went wide as he observed the munched on mess.
“Your Zombie Cows!” I ground my teeth in frustration.
“Oh, that explains it.” Frankie nodded his head and looked at me with a smile on his face.
I resisted the urge to slap him. “Explains what?”
“Why they went for the flowers. They’re vegetarians.”
Revenge of the Cows
“Why did you change the programming?” Frankie hissed as we hunkered behind virtual headstones.
I ducked my head. “It’s not my fault. I wanted to stop them from eating my roses.”
“Look what happened. My poor vegetarian cows are trying to eat our brains.” Frankie glared, his expression scaring me more than the zombie cows. “And they’ve multiplied.”
“If we can reach the terminal I can shut them down,” I whispered, with more of a whine than I liked.
Frankie peeped out. “There are thirty cows after us. Want to make a run for it?” He glared again.
I shivered.
Drabble Wednesday: Love and Monsters
After a break last week, Drabble Wednesday returns with more virtual adventures of Frankie and Joni.
Monster Combat?
Stupid Frankie and his stupid monkey.
Grumbling under my breath I tossed a large bag of monkey poo into the incinerator. If the darn
thing wasn’t so good at fetching our lunch orders I’d—
“Hey! You’ll miss it!” I turned at Frankie’s shout, and raced back to see the new game boot up
on the monitor.
“Let’s get ready to Ruuumble!”
I rolled my eyes. “Stop clowning and watch for glitches.”
“Hmmm. That’s odd. They’re, um, dancing.”
“What?” I started at the screen. Ghouls, monkeys, zombies and puppets danced a jig.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have programmed Riverdance into the soundtrack?”
Virtual Therapy and Love
“Can still see it. The horror… you can’t imagine the sight of a zombie waltzing with a puppet.”
“Tell me, how did it make you feel? Did— zztzzttzzz”
I looked up at the grating noise. The holographic image of Freud jumped, and then frizzed out.
Frankie stood waiting by the VR chamber door.
“Why did you stop my program?!”
“Um, we may have a problem. Zippy’s in love.”
“Zippy? Oh, yeah, your flying monkey. Wait, what? It’s in love?”
“With one of the puppets. I think they’re planning on eloping.”
Shit. I’m going need way more therapy after this escapade.
Just Married
“I thought the wedding was lovely.”
Frankie sighed happily, humming some dumb romantic tune.
I glared, shaking confetti and icing out of my hair. “Yeah, if you think orange tuxes and a Chartreuse wedding gown is lovely. Not to mention the attendant zombies and ghouls.” I dusted off more confetti. “And, oh yes, the bride’s a puppet and the groom’s a flying monkey!” I flopped down in a chair. “I don’t know how you talked me into arranging that ridiculous spectacle. They had a food fight at the reception! How are we going to get the cake off the ceiling?”
What’s Next?
“I’ll miss Zippy, but I understand why he and Zelda wanted to go home.”
I glanced at Frankie. “You didn’t have much choice to send him back, not after the incident on their honeymoon. Lucky for us the company hushed most of that up.”
Frankie frowned. “It was that bad. I mean it was only a little poo flinging.”
“At the mayor of the town. During a speech. Good thing everyone believed it was a stupid stunt.”
“Still, I’ll miss them.”
“Cheer up, the company wants us to work on a new simulation, some horror thing.”
“That sounds like fun.”
That’s all for today. Next week: Zombie Cows
Drabble Wednesday: Ghouls and Monkeys
This week’s instalment of the Virtual Adventures of Frankie and Joni.
Ghouls vs. Zombies
The door slammed shut just in time. I leaned against the titan-steel door listening to sea ghouls shrieking on the other side. Frankie stood next to me, wheezing.
“How did we get those things in the program?”
“Probably—wheeze—from the hidden—wheeze—file.”
With dread, I asked, “Hidden file? What hidden file?”
Frankie took a deep breath. “The one marked Thursday. I opened it.”
“Why would you do that?”
Frankie shrugged. “Curiosity. But don’t worry. The zombies will take care of the ghouls.”
“Zombies? What zombies? And who will take care of the zombies?”
“The flying monkeys, I imagine.”
How to Solve Your Flying Monkey Problem
“Are they still flinging their feces?”
Frankie stared at the screen. “No. Now they’re throwing ghoul bits and zombie heads. Told you they’d take care of the zombies.”
“Yes. And the ghouls and half the VR equipment!” I resisted the urge to punch him. “They’ll destroy the whole chamber, heck the whole complex, if we can’t stop them!”
“I’d send them away first.”
“You can send them away? As in get rid of them?”
“Yes. Figured it out yesterday.”
“Then why are they still here?”
“I like them. They’re cute. We needed new equipment anyway.”
“Frankie! Send them home. Now!”
Aftermath of the Monkeys (Sea Ghouls and Zombies)
“Frankie, I can’t believe the company wants a simulation based on what happened last week.” I sighed, a headache forming. “Monster Combat. Sea ghouls vs. zombies vs. flying monkeys.”
“And don’t forget the puppets.”
Ignoring him, I continued. “At least these creatures won’t be real. I had nightmares until the last of those monkeys went home.”
“Um…”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “Frankie? Did you keep one?”
“A little one. I’m training him to run errands.”
I stared, my headache pounding. Frankie looked at me with sad eyes. I capitulated. “Fine. But I’m not cleaning the monkey poo.”
Drabble Wednesday: Bring on the Ghouls
A bit late today, but technically it’s still Wednesday.
Here are the next instalments of the Virtual Adventures of Frankie and Joni.
The Dimension That Ate Thursday
I blame it all on Frankie. I just did what he said, and pushed the shiny red button. Okay, maybe I was thinking more about the holographic rock concert I wanted to see and didn’t pay attention when Frankie told me not to hold down the button for more than a second or two. But he shouldn’t have hooked up the virtual interface to an interdimensional energy source.
How was I to know that a pocket wormhole would open and swallow Thursday? Nobody remembers what happened or where we went exactly, but everyone keeps having weird flashes of flying monkeys.
Hologram Horror
“The quiet lays on me like a shroud, an ominous portent of the creeping night.” My words echoed through the VR chamber.
“Okay, fine and dandy, but are we going to do with the sea ghouls?”
“I was setting up a mood here, Frankie! Sheesh.” I sighed. “I don’t know. Stick them in the sky, hovering.”
“Um, that’s not what I meant.”
Uh oh. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t mean to. But we have extra ghouls.”
“Extra ghouls?” I looked up. Red eyes looked back at me.
“Frankie?”
“Yeah?”
“I think we should run.”
Then the surplus ghouls chuckled.
Drabble Wednesday: Game Time
Drabble Wednesday is back with more wacky adventures of Frankie and Joni.
For the Birds
“Who shot the robin? Not I.”
“Shhh, they’ll hear you.” I nudged Frankie and peeked out from behind the virtual bushes. No sign of them. “What possessed you to arm a flock of robot chickadees?”
“Not I, said me. Programmed the wren, not the chickadee.”
“Then who—uh, oh.” I remembered.
“It was you! You shot the robin, uh, chickadee, whatever.” Frankie grinned. “You screwed up the program. You screwed up the program.”
“Shut up. I just downloaded a game on the same server. Maybe they got mixed together.”
“Oh, I get it. Now it’s angry and armed birds.”
“Exactly.”
Game Over
I stared at sparks flying off the shorted vid wall. Frankie shouted and cackled beside me.
“Hoo wheee! Pop goes the weasel, baby!” He laughed manically. “Fireworks!”
“That was the memory chip, wasn’t it?”
“Yep. And the hi-res holo function. So much for the new interactive Space Marines scenario.”
“Is there anything we can salvage? Or do we start over?”
“Hmmm. You know…”
“What?” Hope bloomed. “Did you think of a way to fix it?”
“Oh no. The game is toast. It’s just—well, this place would look better with puppets.”
It took everything I had not to smack him.
Puppets, or What?
“You’re telling me the puppets got up and walked away?”
Frankie nodded his head with all the vigour of bartender shaking a martini. “They’re alive! Alive!”
“You’re crazy. Puppets just don’t—” I stopped talking, staring at the guilty look on Frankie’s face. An angry flush crept up the back of my neck. “What did you do to the puppets!”
“Well, I sort of implanted a robotics chip in them. I wanted to see them dance.”
“You… you…”
“But the weirdest thing isn’t that they left. It’s that they took my suit with them.”
Oh, I have to lie down.
